


Arrhythmia

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, heart condition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:31:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: Afghanistan left Tony's heart too damaged for flight, but someone needs to be in the suit.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arboreal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arboreal/gifts).



> I strayed from the prompt a little bit, but I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Original prompt: 
> 
> After escaping Afghanistan, Tony is more seriously injured and so can't be Iron Man. He asks a modern day Bucky, a friend of Rhodey's, if he wants to become a bodyguard/superhero. Tony is really only serious about Bucky being a superhero and only mentioned the bodyguard part as a joke. Bucky decides both sound like fantastic ideas.

Tony never thought that he’d enjoy the scent of antiseptic. He inclined the top of the bed up just because he could, and took a deep breath in through his nose. The astringent scent of hospital sanitization was cut through with an ozone undercurrent, and hints of antibacterial hand soap. After months of nothing but dirt, unwashed flesh, and molten metal, the hospital scents were sharp and achingly unfamiliar. He took in another breath, as deep as his compromised lung capacity would allow, and let it go.

“Better than fresh air, right?”

Tony opened his eyes. His roommate was awake for the first time since Tony had been wheeled into the room. Even Tony Stark didn’t get a private room in a military hospital that was already over capacity. Rhodey had apologized for the lack of privacy, but Tony had been pathetically gratefully not to be left alone. Even just the guy’s breathing in the dark had been a comfort after the months of falling asleep to Yinsen’s snores.

Turning his head slowly and ignoring the way it pulled at the sunburn on his neck, Tony looked over at his roommate. He was propped upright in the bed, his long hair in tangles around his face. He had a scruffy beard that gave him a gaunt, almost skeletal aspect in the light of the streetlamp outside the window. He looked about as bad as Tony felt, though that might have been as much the strange lighting as anything.

“What happened to you?” Tony asked.

The stranger’s right hand drifted across his body, and then fell back to the bed. He shifted his weight to a soundtrack of creaks and rustling fabric. They were such strange noises to Tony – the plastic under the sheets, the _sheets_. Tony had slept so long on a naked cot with nothing but a scratchy packing blanket that the sound, and scent, and feeling of sheets was foreign. He couldn’t stop rubbing his feet over them, twisting the hem between his fingers.

“IED,” Tony’s roommate said finally. He had a strange laugh in his voice when he said it, like there was something funny about an IED. “You?”

Tony thought about how to explain 3 months at the mercy of The 10 Rings, and building the armor, and watching Yinsen die. He thought about the weight of the armor on his shoulders, about the sounds of bullets hitting the plates, and the incredible pressure and heat of firing his thrusters to take off. He thought about hours walking in the sand, and the sound of helicopter blades flying over him, and how at first he’d thought it was just his own pulse thundering in his ears.

“IED,” he said.

An understanding silence passed between them. Tony felt a strange kind of relief at knowing that this wounded stranger understood everything he wasn’t saying without him uttering a word. He realized that he might never have this again with anyone else. Even Rhodey, who had dropped down next to him in the searing desert sands and held him so tightly that he’d split Tony’s sunburned skin, wouldn’t ever have this understanding. After tomorrow, it would be a good thing. Tony didn’t think he wanted anyone to understand. For the night, it was a relief to have a companion.

Tony sat up, and reached across the space between their beds. His hands shook at the very idea of touching a stranger, but he was suddenly starving for contact. “Tony Stark.”

His roommate eyed him for a moment, but finally twisted his hips, and struggled to sit upright. Tony realized that his left sleeve was empty, the hospital gown pinned close to his shoulder. He reached across to take Tony’s hand, folding it firmly in his calloused grip. “James Barnes.”

~*~

The armor wouldn’t leave him alone. In the cave, Tony had drawn his plans for the armor based on what he’d had access to, and what they could manage under the cover of building something entirely different. He’d taken careful stock of his rudimentary tools, and the obsolete computer, and Yinsen’s delicate, steady hands, and he’d built the armor to be functional. It had been the only option, but late at night when he’d been trying to ignore the hunger pangs and the constant thrum of the new arc reactor, Tony had dreamed of what the suit could be if he had his workshop at his disposal.

He’d rebuilt the workshop in his head down to the last screw driver, U and Dum-E being menaces in the background, Jarvis’ dry snarking keeping him awake. He’d imagined putting his hands on the smooth, clean surfaces of his workstations, and adjusting the temperature when he was uncomfortable, and playing his music loud enough to drown out distraction.

In his head, his armor had come together like something out of a King Arthur story, sleek and fierce, and invincible. He’d been unable to risk sharing his ideas and thoughts with Yinsen, but he’d dreamed of bringing Yinsen and his whole family home, the two of them building the armor together like it was meant to be. He’d imagined Yinsen’s wife making them breakfast in the morning, and the kids running around with Dum-E and U. He’d known that it wouldn’t happen that way, that once they’d gotten out of the cave, they would have gone their separate ways, and maybe waved at each other from across the room at scientific conferences. It had just been a nice fantasy, but it had been enough to keep him sane in the cave.

Alone in his workshop, with all his sparkling clean workstations, and U and Dum-E being menaces in the background, was when Tony missed Yinsen the most. He’d always prized those moments of solitude when he could lock himself up in the workshop and just exist, but it was suddenly too quiet, and the air felt wrong without another living body occupying space.

~*~

Tony struggled up from the grips of the nightmare, and sat shaking against his pillows. In the darkness, he could smell the blood. He could see it drenching his hands. In the depths of his dream, he’d left Yinsen in the cave, only to turn around as he took off to see Yinsen stumbling out of the cave’s mouth. Some nights, Yinsen patted him on the side of the face and said, “It’s your fault that I’m dying, you realize.” Tony was never able to disagree him. Mostly, it was a relief to hear him say it. He preferred that one over the terror of realizing that Yinsen had still been alive, and Tony had left him there.

If he had to pick among the grab-bag of his nightmares, he would take drowning over watching Yinsen die any day of the week.

“Jarvis?” His voice came out as a croak in the darkness.

“Yes, sir?”

Tony didn’t really need anything except Jarvis’ voice to remind him that was safe. He considered asking Jarvis to read to him, but the shame in it was enough to make his heart race. He set a hand to his chest, idly tapping on the reactor. “My roommate at the hospital,” he said. “James Barnes. What can you find on him?”

“He is a soldier,” Jarvis responded promptly.

Tony had a sneaking suspicion that Jarvis has been doing his own research without specific authorization, but he wasn’t ready to open that bag of insanity until the sun was at least up. “I think they like to be called airmen,” he said finally.

“Sergeant James Barnes is army. While active, he was a Special Forces sniper with twenty-one confirmed kills. His unit disappeared while on a classified mission in January of this year, and he was listed as MIA until a marine unit discovered him being held captive on April 15th. He was transported back to Camp Black Horse, and from there to the Landstuhl Medical Army Base, where he was treated for malnutrition, dehydration, a multitude of lacerations, five broken bones that had not healed properly, pneumonia, several infected wounds, and other signs of torture. His left arm had been injured in the initial attack on his unit, and had been crudely amputated while in captivity. His medical records are as extensive as your own, sir.”

It should not have made him feel better to hear the terrifying laundry list of another’s injuries, but Tony found his breath calming and his pulse slowing as he listened, automatically comparing the list to his own. He’d been treated for most of the same things in his brief stay at the hospital, and was still on antibiotics for the rest of it.

“Where is he now?” Tony asked.

“Sergeant Barnes has been honorably discharged from service. He returned to Brooklyn ten days ago.”

Tony’s right hand drifted restlessly over his left arm, and then lifted to tap at the reactor casing through his tank top. The muffled _fwump-fwump-fwump_ was as comforting as it was upsetting. He forced his hand back down to his lap, and cleared his throat. “The arm?”

“He has been issued a basic prosthetic, and is undergoing rehabilitative therapy.”

A basic prosthetic. Tony could do better than a basic prosthetic. The fledgling idea of the Mark II was essentially a whole body prosthetic. He could manage a single arm.

Tony threw the blankets off his legs and pushed himself out of bed. The sheets were soaked with sour sweat, and his thighs rubbed together slickly as he freed himself from the blankets. He wanted a shower, but the thought of the water made his stomach do nervous flip-flops. Baby wipes would have to do.

“Start a new file for me,” he said on his way down the stairs. “Call it RoboBarnes.”

“If you insist,” Jarvis agreed dryly.

A smile pulled at the corner of Tony’s lips. “And get me whatever measurements you can find on the guy. Let’s revolutionize another industry or three.”

~*~

Watching Rhodey with his men always made Tony partly jealous, and mostly proud. Rhodey was in his element when he stood at the head of the troops, doling out wisdom and orders. Tony had seen him interacting with his juniors outside of command environments, and it was worse in a lot of ways. They’d always gotten each other – they rotated around each other like gears in an assembly. When Tony turned, Rhodey did too, but Tony turned just as much on Rhodey’s motion as the reverse. When it was just the two of them, they could be the same brain inhabiting two bodies, but when he saw Rhodey with his airmen, he realized how much _more_ his best friend was than Tony’s fellow gear, and how much of his life Tony couldn't share.

“The future of air combat. Is it manned or unmanned?” Rhodey asked the assembled airmen, who hung on his voice as much as Tony did. “I tell you, in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot’s instinct, his insight – that ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious, and discern its outcome.”

If there was anything Tony knew, it was how to make an entrance, and he didn’t need to hear Rhodey extol the benefits of a pilot behind the controls when he was about to strip away the controls altogether. “Why not a pilot without a plane?” he asked, because he needed to set Rhodey up for what he was about to ask, and no one else would get it. Rhodey would get it.

Tony could see the subtle tension in Rhodey’s neck, but Rhodey still turned to smile at him as he approached. “Look who fell outta the sky! Mr. Tony Stark,” Rhodey introduced, though Tony could feel the gathered eyes on him without the introduction, hungry and grabbing, and he wanted them gone.

“Speaking about manned or unmanned, you gotta get him to you about the time he guessed wrong,” Tony said, because it would break the tension, and Rhodey would love it as much as he would hate it. He spread his hands. “It’s spring break, just remember that. Spring break 1987, that lovely lady, what was his name? Was it Ivan?”

Rhodey rolled his eyes hard, because they both knew it had been Evan, and he’d been a wonderful weekend diversion for Tony. “Don’t do that, they’ll believe it. Don’t do that,” Rhodey said over him, already waving his hands at the lines of interested airmen. “Give us a couple of minutes, you guys.”

Tony let them all walk away before stepping close to Rhodey’s side, and backing him slowly around the nose of the jet.

“You don’t look good, Tones,” Rhodey said. He ducked his head to force Tony to meet his eyes. “You look like you should be in bed, not running around my hangar.”

Even with as angry as Rhodey was with him, his face was lined with concern. “I’m working on something big,” Tony said to waylay Mamma Hen Rhodes bursting out of the serious Air Force Colonel’s body like a fluffy, soup-bearing alien.

Rhodey’s relief was palpable, and Tony felt the bottom drop out of his stomach when he repeated the words in his head and set them to a soundtrack of the press conference. Before Tony could cut him off, Rhodey put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re about to make a whole lotta people around here real happy,” he said.

Tony wondered how much pressure Rhodey was under that the mere suggestion of Tony going back into the bloodshed business was enough to make him that relieved. “It’s not for the military,” Tony interrupted before Rhodey could start planning his speech to his superiors. “It’s not –” A weapon. Not meant to hurt anyone. Not going to drench his ledger in more blood. “It’s different.”

Rhodey’s face shut down hard, and he took half a step back. “What, are you a humanitarian now?” he demanded.

With a jolt, Tony realized that shutting down weapons production, that condemning the system that he’d helped to support must have sounded to Rhodey as condemnation of _him_ personally, and the men and women he served with. Tony tried to put a stop to it. He held out a hand imploringly, waiting for Rhodey’s gear teeth to lock around his so they could spin in synch again. If there was anyone who could understand the Mark II and share the awesome responsibility of it with Tony, it was Rhodey.

“I need you to listen to me –”

“What you _need_ is to get your mind right!” Rhodey interrupted, lowing his voice belatedly. Tony couldn’t interpret his expression, but he didn’t think that Rhodey had been so angry at him for years. “I’m serious. It was nice seeing you, Tony.”

Rhodey left Tony standing in the shadow of the jet, looking up at a weapons system he had helped to build. He didn’t realize that he’d started tapping on the reactor casing until the airmen who had led him into the hangar came searching for him. If his chest felt heavy, well, there was a piece of machinery embedded in his sternum that was nearly the size of a soup can. It could be forgiven.

~*~

The sound of his breath made a counterpoint to his heartbeat. He listened to both speeding up as he accelerated through the clouds. His limbs were on fire, muscles jumping and burning with the strain of keeping himself locked into position against the push-pull of the turbulent air. For a brief moment, he was back at the 10 Rings camp, feeling the air pressing down on him as he rocketed upward. In those brief seconds, he’d thought that maybe he would make it, just keep going up, and up, and up. He’d already been delirious with adrenalin and the fumes from the flame throwers, or he would have remembered that the best he could hope for was a sustained sort of fall.

Closed up in the Mark II, he felt that same exhilaration without the excuse of fumes. He wanted to keep going. He wanted to touch the moon. He _could_ touch the moon if he just stretched his arm out far enough, if he just climbed up high enough.

He started getting dizzy from the altitude and the exhilaration about the same time warning lights began to flash at him from the HUD. His lungs started to labor, and he felt his stomach twisting sickly under his ribs.

“There is a critical buildup of ice forming on the thrusters,” Jarvis warned him.

It took Tony a dozen frenzied heartbeats to process the words. By the time his higher brain functions had kicked in enough to remember why ice was a bad thing, he was plummeting down through empty air without his stomach or his lungs.

~*~

“Sir, can you hear me?”

Jarvis’ voice twisted and distorted through Tony’s pulse. Somewhere, there was an alarm warbling in his ear. Tony squeezed his eyes closed, and then blinked them open. Red sparks popped in his vision, and it took him several seconds to realize that it was the HUD, and not just lights exploding behind his eyes. The words were all jumbled and he could see only a blur of red across the screen.

“What happened?” The words came out slurred and soft over the persistent ringing in his ears. His head was throbbing, and his chest hurt like he’d been kicked. He reached up numbly to feel for the reactor, only to hit the chest plate. His heart felt like it was hammering against the back of the reactor casing.

“Based on the readings and your current condition, I believe that you experienced a paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia episode.”

Tony blinked. He knew that he understood those words, but he couldn’t parse them out through the headache and the pounding of his pulse. “What?”

“Your heart rate reached 282 beats per minute, sir. Do you remember falling?”

It took him several seconds to put events in order. He remembered getting the thrusters working before hitting the ground, and the way his stomach had caught up with him just in time to punish him for the fall. He remembered weaving a drunken path back to the mansion, and dropping down on the roof. _Through_ the roof.

“Yeah, I remember that part,” he managed finally, and then lifted his head to look around. He was back in the workshop, and appeared to be buried in the hood of a car. It was difficult to tell which one, because he was also covered in fire suppressant spray. “Okay, so… okay.”

“May I summon the medical authorities?” Jarvis asked. He wasn’t programmed to express concern, so Tony must have been imagining it.

Tony wondered if he should change the medical and emergency protocols. Jarvis had called the ambulance on him once when he’d passed out after a night of too much fun with a $3,000 bottle of scotch, and the resulting PR mess had quickly convinced him that he didn’t need his overprotective AI calling for the medics every time he stubbed his toe. Maybe he should rethink that. Above him, both of the bots ticked and clicked in concern.

“No, I’m fine,” he groaned, making an attempt to sit up. He managed to get his shoulders and neck up, and then the world titled sideways, and he decided that staying down for a while might be a better idea.

“Obviously,” Jarvis observed.

~*~

“Considering the nature of your body modification, traditional cardiac treatment is out of the question. I can refer you to a specialist who might be willing to take your case. He’s a neurosurgeon, but he will take on on cases that are interesting to his, let’s say, _superior intellect_. He is an excellent surgeon, and if he agrees to take your case, he might be able to remove the shrapnel, and possibly the reactor as well. I’m not sure that even he could manage it, Mr. Stark, but he might be your best hope.”

Doctor Suresh folded his hands and set them on his desk, waiting for Tony’s response. He’d been cool at the beginning of their consultation, but Tony couldn’t blame him for that. He’d made the man sign so many NDAs that his hand had to be cramping. Once he’d gotten a look at Tony’s chest though, his attitude had flipped to barely-contained excitement.

Behind him, Tony’s chest x-rays glowed with malevolent light. His chest was a lightning storm of remembered agony. It was one of the most terrifying and beautiful things he’d ever seen. He tore his eyes away from it reluctantly, and refocused his attention on the doctor. Dr. Suresh was one of the premier cardiologists in the city, and absolutely the most discreet.

“Give me the name,” Tony said. “I’ll look into it.”

He shifted his weight to stand, and Dr. Suresh hurried to follow his lead. The doctor twisted his hands together and then sucked in a quick breath. Tony already guessed at the question before Dr. Suresh got up the nerve to ask.

“Mr. Stark, I know this is not a comfortable question, but would you be willing to donate your body to science after your death? The extent of your body modifications, and the –”

“Sure,” Tony interrupted. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already planned on it. He turned away from the doctor before Suresh could get through a stumbled apology and a gross expression of gratitude. Without responding, Tony closed the door behind him, and ignored the receptionist’s hurried farewell on his way out the door.

He was already running the numbers on his ability to pilot the suit as he pulled the car into the garage. His Shelby Cobra had been removed to an auto body shop after it had been turned into an impromptu bed for his 300 pound full body prosthetic. The tech at the shop had assumed that it had been the victim of a falling tree limb, which Tony had not contradicted.

Tony backed the R8 into its place, and left the engine running. He pulled his phone out, but didn’t turn the display on. He could feel that his pulse was high, but he didn’t want to know how high. Since the first incident, he’d tried to fly three more times, and had been grounded prematurely each time by a sky rocketing heart rate.

The armor had other uses, and it had major implications for the world of prosthetics. It wasn’t the end of the world that he couldn’t fly in it.

He put the phone back into his pocket without checking it, and took the key out of the ignition.

“Is Project RoboBarnes through the fabricators?” he asked as he stepped out of the car. Dum-E was waiting at the front of the car, camera lens _whirring_ as he focused on Tony, his clawed hand rotating. Tony had to crawl over him to get out from between the Audi and Saleen.

“Indeed, sir. The RoboArm is ready for assembly. I should remind you to take your medication before you begin.”

Tony grunted, but he pulled the drawer open with his prescriptions, and rifled through them until he’d found the correct bottles. Once upon a time, his minifridge had been stocked with mixers, energy drinks, and mini bottles of liquor. Now it was stocked with hipster juices and coconut water. He laughed at himself as he pulled out a green juice and twisted the top off.

“Not like it makes a difference,” he said, sniffing at it, and pulling a face. “Might as well take the pills with a shot of Jack for all the good it does.”

“May I suggest the blueberry juice as an alternative?” Jarvis asked.

Snorting, Tony sucked the thick vegetable juice down, and dropped the pills down after it. He slammed the empty bottle to the counter, wiped his mouth on his suit jacket, and clapped his hands together.

“Give me the tunes, J. We have some future horror movies to inspire.”

“Might I surmise that 80’s ‘hair metal’ music would be appropriate?”

Tony grinned and picked up a screw driver. He twirled it between his fingers. “You know me so well.”


	2. Two

****

Tony sat outside the physical therapy clinic, and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He’d thought about having Happy drive him, but Barnes didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be impressed by a limo and a driver. Tony looked through the passenger window to the clinic again. Barnes was visible through the front window, balancing himself pretty damn well on top of something that Tony couldn’t see, but he could only guess was one of those half-ball balance torture devices.

“Not like the guy is going to say no to a kick ass cybernetic arm,” Tony told his reflection in the rear view mirror. He adjusted his hair, and idly wondered if he should have stopped to groom himself a bit better before taking off. “Yeah. Definitely, who doesn’t want to be a cyborg?” He laughed shortly, and then realized that he’d been sitting alone in his car for almost an hour, and now he was talking and laughing to himself. Hopefully there were no enterprising paparazzi spying on him.

Making like he was on his way to a press event, Tony pushed the door open and climbed out of the car. It had less effect in his shop pants and ratty hoodie, but hey, he was Tony Stark. He could pull off anything on the carpet, and he was reasonably sure that he’d worn torn jeans and a sweater to at least one premier. The prosthetic was in the trunk, but he probably shouldn’t go hauling it around until he at least had Barnes’ attention. He locked the door with a click of a button, patted the car affectionately on his way around the back, and stepped onto the sidewalk. By the time he turned to give the window a charming smile, it was empty.

Tony felt a pang of unexpected disappointment, though he wasn’t sure what he expected. Barnes hadn’t known he was there, wasn’t expecting him – hell, they’d spent one week together in a hospital, and one or both of them had been hopped up on the good drugs most of the time. Barnes might not even _remember_ him. He adjusted the sleeve of his hoodie, and went into the clinic.

The young woman at the front desk greeted him with a distracted smile and held up one finger in a gesture to wait. She was dressed in yellow scrubs liberally decorated with cartoon cats, and she had her brown hair pulled back into a simple tail. There was no spark of recognition in her eyes when she looked back up, and her smile was politely professional.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I’m here for James Barnes,” Tony said. He braced his forearms on the counter, and leaned over to charm his way through the ‘here for what?’ question. Based on her entirely uninterested response, he probably didn’t need to bother.

She motioned to the chairs lined up against the window. “He’s just getting cleaned up. You can wait for him out here.”

Tony tapped his fingers on the counter, thanked her, and turned to lean his back against the wall. He didn’t think he was ready to set his back to a window. The receptionist gave him a curious glance, but she dismissed him quickly enough when he crossed his ankles, and took out his phone. For the moment, Tony was an uninteresting stranger in torn pants and a ratty hoodie, glued to his phone like everyone else.

The door behind the counter opened, and Barnes stepped out. They could have gotten dressed out of the same wardrobe, but Barnes wore it a hellavulot better than Tony did. Barnes looked like a runway model to Tony’s Insomnia Chic. He had a backpack slung over his shoulders and buckled across the chest to keep it secure. His left sleeve had been cut off and then pinned up, and he wore combat boots that looked like were about five steps from dissolving into their component parts.

He did not look startled to see Tony in the least. Barnes nodded to the receptionist, and then made a flicking gesture with his head for Tony to follow him. “I was wondering if you were going to come inside, or if you were just going to continue to lurk like a stalker.”

Tony felt the blood rushing up to his face, but Barnes wasn’t looking at him. They continued down the sidewalk in silence, walking past Tony’s car without a backwards glance. Tony wondered briefly if he wasn’t meant to follow at all. Acknowledging his presence wasn’t the same as giving Tony permission to trail after him like a lost duckling.

Barnes stopped so abruptly that Tony almost ran into his back. He turned on his heel and gave Tony a very long, considering look. “Coffee?”

Relief and weirdly giddy excitement flooded through Tony’s chest. He swallowed hard and nodded. Barnes nodded back, short and decisive. He turned around again and set off with the purposeful, gliding stride of a trained killer. Tony stayed half a step behind him, perfectly content to watch him move, and tried to tell himself that he was eyeballing Barnes’ gait to gauge how the new prosthetic would impact his balance. Yeah, all for science.

~*~

“Going to tell me why you’re lurking outside my PT office?”

Tony held up a finger in protest. “Not lurking. Waiting.”

Barnes quirked an eyebrow at him, and took an alarmingly large gulp of his hot coffee. He sucked air in through his teeth, set the cup down, and waited. Tony wondered if he was being interrogated, and had to remind himself that he was in a warm coffee shop in Brooklyn, the air smelled like coffee and pastry, and Seal was playing over the speakers. No cave, no Pashto in the background, no dry air that smelled perpetually of burnt dust.

“I have a gift for you. Not exactly a gift,” he amended when Barnes’ eyes narrowed a slight fraction. “I’m working on something, and I need someone to test it for me. You happen to have just what I need for that testing. Or, more to the point, _don’t_ have just what I need for the testing. This makes more sense than it seems like it does at the moment.”

Barnes took another swallow of his coffee – black, but with enough sugar to make a teenager flinch – and then spread his hand on the table top. “So, you built something for me that you don’t want to call a gift, because I might not accept it. Obviously it’s a better option to ask the one-armed man to be a guinea pig.”

Tony’s mouth went slack. “That. That is not even a little bit what I meant.”

“Mmhm. Drink your coffee, and then show me this thing you need ‘tested,’ alright?”

Tony had the prosthetic in the car along with the tools to fit it, but suddenly he wanted someone in his workshop. He wanted another living, breathing person in his space. He wanted someone who hadn’t seen him broken yet, someone who understood what he’d gone through without pitying him for it. They finished their coffee in silence that wasn’t strained, even if it wasn’t precisely companionable, and then Tony took a (very attractive, very quiet, _very attractive_ ) virtual stranger home.

~*~

Barnes did not investigate Tony’s workshop. His eyes darted automatically to the exits, the security, and marked the corners that he couldn’t see around, but he didn’t touch anything. He waited for Tony to gesture him to a seat before levering himself onto the stool, and twisting casually to keep Tony in his line of sight. He made no comments when Tony took the box out of the trunk, but his expression was amused as Tony lugged it up to a table.

Tony fiddled with a screwdriver, suddenly uncertain about revealing the products of his labor. He took a moment to introduce the bots, though he pointedly did not mention Jarvis. He trusted Barnes as much as he trusted anyone who wasn't Pepper, Rhodey, or Happy, but he didn't really need the world knowing that he'd created an AI that could (and regularly did) pass the Touring test. Barnes looked at both U and Dum-E, but made no comment. He didn't know them yet, and they didn't look like much more than factory robots to anyone who didn't know them. Tony tried not to be offended. He made a loose gesture toward Barnes’ chest. “Going to need the shirt to come off. Down to the skin.”

Cocking his head, Barnes said, “I’m going to need a little more to go off of than you just want to see me naked.”

“Not that you’re necessarily wrong,” Tony blabbed, “but for the moment, completely professional interest. Completely, mostly, totally professional. Scout’s honor.” Before Barnes could get the wrong – right, definitely right – idea, Tony flipped open the catches on the box, and nudged the top open. He pulled the protective foam off the top, and then stepped back to let Barnes look it over.

The RoboArm was made of gleaming titanium-alloy sheets, the internal workings designed to mimic muscle movement. If it worked the way he meant it to, it should move like a natural arm.

“It can be painted,” Tony said while Barnes examined the offering. “I am also considering a silicone sleeve that I think I can eventually get to a close approximation of human skin. If that’s something you’d be interested in.”

Barnes looked between the prosthetic and Tony’s face. The silence stretched for several seconds. “Why would you do this for me?”

“ _For you_ is somewhat relative,” Tony hedged, even though it was a bald faced lie. “Eventually, this technology will revolutionize the industry. Hence the… guinea pig thing.” When Barnes didn’t say anything, Tony picked the arm up and held it out for inspection. “I’m working on something even bigger than this, but I can’t do it alone.”

“So obviously a total stranger is the best option to help with your ultra-secret project.”

“Hey – we shared a room for a whole week. That’s basically the longest I’ve cohabitated with anyone since I was… eighteen? You’re practically family.”

Barnes snorted, and then shook his head. He drew in a breath and held it for several seconds, shook his head again, and unzipped his hoodie. Tony set the prosthetic down, and turned away with the pretense of getting his tools. He wouldn’t be able to install the prosthetic, but he should be able to fit it. When he turned back around, Barnes was shirtless and sitting impassively on the stool. His chest was a mess of scar tissue, the worst of it radiating out from his left side. What remained of his left arm was covered in a soft sock, and the area around it was rife with peaks and valleys of bloodless white, and angry, bloody red.

Barnes turned his hand over to gesture to the prosthetic. “What’s so special about this, other than it looking like something off _The Terminator_ set?”

Tony turned the prosthetic so Barnes could see the shoulder joint. “Cybernetic.”

In the long list of possible response, Tony hadn’t considered laughter. While Tony blinked at him bemusedly, Barnes reached forward to run his fingers over the connectors. His stump lifted as well, and from the angle, Tony suspected that he was trying to reach for prosthetic with the missing hand. Barnes looked up at Tony without a hint of self-consciousness, his eyes alight with mirth. “No shit?”

Tony grinned, the smile spreading uncontrollably across his face. “Not one single shit, Mr. Barnes.”

“Bucky.”

For a startling second, Tony thought he’d heard _fuck me_ , and had to rewind his attention. “Come again?”

As if he was reading Tony’s mind, Barnes winked. “My name. Call me Bucky. No Mr’s, and if you call me James, I might hit you with that shiny new arm.”

“Bucky it is,” Tony agreed finally.

Bucky twisted on his stool to offer his left side. “Suit me up, Doc.”

“Tony,” Tony corrected. “Despite the seven PhDs, no one calls me ‘doc.’”

Bucky lifted his stump and gestured to it with his opposite hand. “Suit me up, Tony,” he amended.

Tony eased the cup of the prosthetic over Bucky’s sock, and traced over it with the tip of his stylus. Jarvis lit up a screen for him over Bucky’s shoulder, automatically taking measurements, and Tony resisted the urge to grab Bucky by the chin to pull his face back around when he twisted to look. While Bucky sat quietly under his hands, Tony explained the unpleasant parts – that it would have to be anchored to his nervous system, and the deltoid plates would anchor into his pectoral muscles. What remained of his left arm would be compromised, possibly beyond repair. The arm itself was modular, and could be switched out as he made improvements, but the socket would be a lifetime commitment.

“Can’t see that it matters much,” Bucky said, shrugging his right shoulder. Tony could see his pectoral muscle twitching in reaction to the pinch of the prosthetic, but his expression remained impassive in the face of the discomfort. They could have been sitting beach-side for all that Bucky reacted to what had to be an intensely uncomfortable fitting. Tony wondered how much feeling he had in the stump, but kept his mouth shut.

Tony didn’t think he’d ever met someone who was as casually dismissive of his own health as Tony was himself, and he had a brief flash of what his friends must have been dealing with from him for years. He wasn't sure what to do with the epiphany and decided to shelve it for the time being. He gestured U over to hold the prosthetic steady, folded the deltoid panels over Bucky’s shoulder, and made marks for adjustments with a grease pencil.

“Sorry, am I in _your_ way?” he asked when Dum-E trundled over, unasked, to hold a light over Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky laughed, and Dum-E _whirred_ , but lifted the light out of the way. They fell into silence while they worked, Tony’s blazing awareness of Bucky fading as he settled into the rhythm of it. Tony hadn’t felt so at ease with _quiet_ in longer than he could remember. Just like at the hospital, Tony found Bucky’s silent company oddly soothing.

“How would you like a job?” Tony blurted out when he realized that nearly an hour had passed without so much as a peep of complaint out of Bucky.

Bucky smiled impishly at him. “Thought I was going to be busy being your guinea pig?”

Nudging U away, Tony gently pulled the prosthetic off, noting the marks that had been left behind on Bucky's skin. The sock came away in the cup, but Bucky fished it out without a word. He used it to staunch a trickle of blood, and Tony wondered how much feeling he had in the limb.

“Bodyguard,” Tony said, although if anyone had suggested that he needed a bodyguard, even just a few hours before, he would have flipped them off. Bucky wouldn’t be his bodyguard, not really. Eventually, Bucky was going to be the pilot of the Mark II, and ‘bodyguard’ was as good of a job title as any to cover for that. He set the prosthetic down and gestured to it, dismissing the notion that Bucky might not want to be an experimental pilot – his reaction to the prosthetic had been telling enough. “I might have something more than just this for you to experiment with in a few weeks.”

Bucky examined him with intense focus, and then slowly nodded. He reached out with his right hand. “When do I start?”

Tony pressed their palms together. “You just did.”

~*~

A loud crash and a feminine shout drew Tony out of an engineering fugue, and he made a break for the stairs even as Jarvis warned him, “Sir, there is a disturbance in the kitchen.” He stumbled up the last two stairs to find Bucky crouched behind a dinner plate, fending off oranges. Dressed a business suit and still carrying her purse slung over one arm, Pepper slammed another orange into the makeshift shield hard enough to shower Tony with speckles of juice.

“I am not a thief!” Bucky snarled, ducking under the next projectile, and rolling for the couch. Pepper chased after him, one hand fumbling in her purse.

“Tony! Happy is on his way, get back!” Pepper shouted.

Tony’s chest seized up, his lungs emptied, and it took him a second to realize that he was laughing, not having some kind of asthma attack. He fumbled for the wall with one hand and braced the opposite hand on his chest to encourage his lungs to draw in air. Dizziness swamped him, his heart rate alarm went off, and he decided that his ass was probably better off on the floor.

“Tony, oh, my God! Are you having a heart attack?! _Don’t you move!_ ” She found her pepper spray and whipped it out like it was a gun, aiming it in Bucky’s direction as she backed slowly to Tony’s side. Bucky hit the floor, and knocked the coffee table over so he could take cover behind it. “Jarvis, call a paramedic!”

“I do not believe that is necessary, Ms. Potts,” Jarvis said while Tony was still gasping from air.

Honestly, he had progressed from laughter to genuine pain, and was struggling to get himself under control. His ribs hurt like they’d been broken, and wouldn’t that be a fun headline? _Tony Stark laughs himself to death in his Malibu home!_

Tony had just enough presence of mind to wonder if Bucky was having a flashback, and gasped out, “He’s my guest,” just as Happy slammed through the front door with his Stark Special 9mm drawn. Tony flung a hand out and waved it to get Happy’s attention. “Put it down.”

“Ms. Potts said there was an intruder – ”

“Not a goddamned intruder,” Bucky piped up from the relative safety of the overturned coffee table. He sound annoyed, but not panicked, so that was good. Then again, despite snooping somewhat creepily through Bucky’s medical records, Tony didn’t actually know anything about him. Maybe ‘annoyed’ was what he sounded like when he was caught in a PTSD flashback.

“Pepper, meet Bucky.”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” she asked, clearly affronted by the whole situation. She still had one hand resting on Tony’s chest, and the other pointing the pepper spray in Bucky’s general direction, and she was crouched in those 3” heels, and Tony loved her so much.

“My bodyguard,” Tony said, covering her hand with his, and patting her lightly on the knee with the other. She’d tipped forward and was pressed uncomfortably into his gut. Rather than taking her knee out of his gut, she straightened up, unintentionally (or not) putting more weight onto his bladder.

All motion in the room seemed to freeze. Pepper’s hand dropped, and her head whipped around. Her mouth went slack, her eyes widened, and color flushed into her cheeks. From the doorway, Happy said, “I thought I was your bodyguard?”

“You're Pepper’s bodyguard,” Tony reminded him. “I just hired Bucky yesterday.”

“You can’t _hire_ people,” Pepper sputtered.

“I kind of own the company,” Tony reminded her. He put one hand on her knee and used it to lever some of her weight off his sensitive internal organs, and held the other hand up with his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just a little bit, I mean, it is my name on the building and everything. But he’s a personal employee, not an SI employee, no worries.”

“Can I come out yet?” Bucky asked.

“Yes,” Tony said, just as Pepper and Happy both shouted, “ _No!_ ”

The pepper spray and 9mm came back up. Tony looked in between his two friends, and couldn’t help but smile. “Have I ever mentioned how good of a team you two are? Seriously, this a world-class response right here.”

“Oh, shut up,” Pepper huffed, clicking the safety back on her pepper spray, and shoving it back into her purse. She used the freed hand to brace her weight on the wall, and shoved herself to her feet. Once she was steady on her heels, she reached down to help Tony up, and then straightened out her jacket. She dropped her purse to the counter, and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Alright, _Bucky_ ,” she said, her tone tacking on ‘ _if that’s really your name,_ ’ very clearly, “come out from there. I’m going to need to see a résumé.”

~*~

Tony had always felt small next to Obie. Objectively, he knew that Obadiah wasn’t that much larger than he was, but Obie had been towering over him for so long that Tony couldn’t shake the habit of shrinking around him. Standing on the stairs at one of his own functions, crushed into Obadiah’s body, Tony felt like he’d instantly lost a hundred pounds and a foot of height. His heart labored, and his breath was frozen in his lungs, and he might have been a ghost for all the connection he felt to the world.

Obadiah smacked him hard on the shoulder, the affectionate father-figure for the cameras, even as he let Tony in on the depth of his betrayal. Tony watched him go, and felt a giddy horror swirling around in his stomach. He shouldn’t have expected anything more. His own father had betrayed him and walked away more times than he could count. Why he would have thought that Obie would be any different was beyond him.

A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he stumbled back a step before regaining his balance. He saw the flash of a camera, and turned away before he had to deal with another _Stark Stumbling Drunk!_ headline. He fled, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, his stomach flipping and twisting around his spine. He had to beg with his knees to keep him upright, and waiting for the valet to bring his car back was enough to make him wish for the armor. Arrhythmia or no arrhythmia, he wanted to be in the air and out of range of the cameras.

By the time he had his hands on the wheel, the childish hurt had drained away and he was just angry. Someone was trading on his name to sell weapons across the line.

“What did you think?” he hissed at his reflection, stopping at a red light. “That they’d _stolen_ that giant stockpile of your weapons and no one told you about it? Stupid, stupid, fucking _stupid._ ”

The light turned green, he floored it. The tires squealed on the road, and he felt the pressure of his pulse in his neck. His vision flickered red with each thump of his heart. His weapons were in the hands of terrorists, and they were using them to destroy lives in Yinsen’s home town.

He was still two miles from the house when he jerked the wheel. The Audi’s tires skidded over the gravel at the shoulder for several feet before coming to a stop. He slapped his hands on the wheel hard enough to make them sting, and threw himself back against the seat. An alarm went off from his phone, the subdued ringtone that warned him his heart rate was going too high. He ignored it, biting hard into the base of his thumb to stifle the sounds of his fury.

“Call Bucky.”

Tony barely recognized his own voice. The phone connected, and Bucky huffed into the microphone. “I see you decided to go out for the night, after all. You know that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to tell your body-”

“Remember when I told you that I would have something bigger for you to play with?” Tony interrupted.

The other side of line was quiet for several seconds. “What happened?”

“How do you feel about flying?”

If Bucky was confused, he didn’t show it. “Where do you need me to go?”

“Meet me in the workshop,” Tony said instead of answering. He’d been ready to show Bucky the Mark II in the morning. 2 A.M. was as good as 9 A.M. as far as he was concerned.

~*~

“Tony… you want me to go into combat in an untested… what do I even call this?” Bucky hissed throwing his hands up and turning to face Tony. The panels on his prosthetic arm lifted in a parody of muscle contraction as he moved. He was dressed in the undersuit, which he’d jokingly called Kink Spandex as he’d pulled it on, and was obviously regretting his earlier lack of questions. At his shoulder, the Mark II stood silent sentinel, looking menacing in the light of Tony’s rage.

“It’s a full body prosthetic,” Tony lied. Maybe he’d meant for it to be more than a weapon, maybe he’d wanted it to be nothing so much as a suit of armor, protection for him, eventually protection for others who were vulnerable. It wasn’t that anymore. It was vengeance.

“Bullshit,” Bucky said. “This a combat suit, Tony, goddamnit! How could you ask me to go back there?”

Tony gritted his teeth. “The 10 Rings.”

Bucky fell silent. At his side, his metal hand clenched so tightly that the fingers shrieked against the palm. He consciously stretched the fingers out, and the bicep panels slowly laid flat. The prosthetic had been installed barely three weeks before, and his control over it was still spotty. Tony shouldn’t be asking this of him, but Tony wouldn’t survive a flight to Afghanistan, and someone had to do something about his weapons loose in the wild. It didn’t have to be Bucky – it wasn’t Bucky’s problem. He could guide the suit remotely, and Jarvis could compensate for any issues with reaction times.

_…No unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot’s instinct, his insight._

Bucky’s eyes stroked over Tony’s face with the intensity of a blast heater. “Tell me what to do.”

It was insanity, pure insanity. It would take months to get him ready to pilot the suit in combat. It wasn’t even _meant_ to be in combat.

Except that Tony had built an armory into it already. Was he really so far gone that he couldn’t admit that the suit had always been meant for this? He had pursued Bucky for exactly this, had fit the suit to him under false pretenses. And he’d let himself get lost in the depths of Bucky’s eyes in the process. What if Bucky didn’t come back? If Tony had to watch him die through the eyes of his own creation, just like he had with Yinsen?

Bucky stepped forward sharply and grabbed his wrist. Tony froze, only then realizing that he’d started to tap the reactor through his shirt. It made a dull _fwhumpfwhump_ sound under his fingertips. Bucky pressed Tony’s hand flat to his chest, and then covered it with warm fingers of his right hand. His metal fingers curved around Tony’s pulse. Tony’s hand was trapped between the reactor and the callouses of Bucky’s right palm. On his wrist, the metal fingers shifted restlessly in response to Bucky’s agitation.

Tony’s eyes darted over Bucky’s right shoulder to where the Mark II still waited. He wanted to be the one in the suit. He wanted the repulsors singing under his hands. He wanted every single one of those hateful monsters dead, and he wanted to be the one to do it. They were using his weapons. Getting them back was his responsibility.

“I can’t ask you to do this. You’re right. I can’t ask you to clean up my mess.”

“Tony!” Bucky let go of his wrist, and caught him by the chin. He pulled until Tony looked up at him. “Tell me. What to do. Trust me when I say that I owe those fuckers as much payback as you do.”

Tony swallowed hard. He was caught by Bucky’s eyes, and saw all his anger and desperation reflected back at him. He surged forward, crushing their lips together in a bruising assault, and then quickly pulled away. Bucky caught the back of his head and kissed him again with exactly as much force. It was a promise as much as a demand, and it was damned demanding. Tony let the press of their mouths continue for several seconds, and then pushed him away.

 “Get up on the platform,” Tony ordered. “The suit is aligned to your arm. Just hold it out, and the suit will do the rest.”

Bucky released him immediately, and jumped up onto the platform. The suit opened up to greet him, and he gave it only a brief glance before shifting his left arm backwards. The Mark II latched onto it, the sensors Tony had implanted in both lining up neatly. Bucky didn’t so much as flinch as the panels closed up around him, but stepped confidently backwards, as if he’d done it a thousand times, as if he could trust that it would catch him. The platform opened, and the valet bots descended from the ceiling to secure the bolts.

“Say hello to Bucky, Jarvis,” Tony said as soon as the helmet had been secured, and the eye lights engaged.

“Hello, Sergeant Barnes.”

“I don’t know who the hell you are, but knock that Sergeant Barnes shit off right now,” Bucky responded, his voice piping in over the workshop speakers. The HUD feed opened up over Tony’s workbench, showing the readout, and Bucky’s eyes flickering over the information. “There’s a lot going on in here, Tony.”

“When you get home, I’ll introduce you to Jarvis properly. In the meantime, we’re going to take care of you. We’ll handle the flight remotely until you get the hang of the controls. You’ve got seven hours to figure it out.”

“Guess I should have taken a bathroom break first,” he muttered.

“Good thing you’re carrying a bathroom around with you,” Tony responded.

Bucky laughed. “Probably not the worst thing I’ve carried in my pants. How are we doing this?”

Tony opened the freshly installed roof port with a command, and then had to repeat it when the door bugged and stalled. Crashing through the ceiling had made building a new skylight a lot easier, although Pepper disapproved of having a section of the floor ready to slide open at a moment’s notice. Tony was going to install some kind of warning light. Eventually. Probably.

Tony settled the HUD over his right eye. “You are just going to relax, and enjoy the ride. Jarvis, load up the tutorials.”

~*~

Watching through the cameras as Bucky decimated The 10 Rings members in Gulmira, Tony felt a conflicting pull in his chest. Every death was more blood on his hands, but every death of one of them satisfied a dark voice in his head that wanted revenge for Yinsen and his family, for every innocent they had terrorized with the products of his labor. He kept a careful eye on the surveillance as Bucky efficiently cleared out the hostiles.

Bucky handled the combat capabilities of the Mark II better than Tony could have. He might not have built it with his own hands, but he was a soldier down to his marrow.  He adapted to the lack of a firearm with impressive speed, and called out what he needed with each situation. Jarvis responded almost before Bucky had gotten the words out, leaving Tony to focus on watching the exterior cameras and warning Bucky of incoming hostiles.

“The flying is something I’ll have to get used to,” Bucky gasped when Tony triggered his thrusters to launch him over a truck speeding around a corner with a dozen armed men firing from the bed. He landed off balance and stumbled a dozen heavy steps, throwing his arms out automatically to use stabilizers to get back to his feet.

“We’ll go for lessons,” Tony suggested. He had to clear his throat to get the words out around the envy.

“The area is clear, sirs,” Jarvis offered after several seconds of relative quiet.

“Get out of there, Bucky. We’ve just made a lot of noise, and there are a lot of government agencies that would like to get their hands on the source of the noise.” Tony quickly cycled through the comm lines he’d tapped into, getting a feel for who knew what, and caught Rhodey’s name.

“Jarvis, get a handle on that. Keep our friend below radar. And get me Rhodey on the line.”

~*~

Tony was on his feet and trying not to pace as he waited for Bucky. He’d put Rhodey off scrambling the jets after Bucky, but the man had still been on in the suit for nearly 15 hours, and who knew when he’d slept last. Jarvis took over the controls to bring Bucky in through the roof portal. He dropped hard the last foot, stumbled, and ended up on one knee.

Tony rushed up the platform, and pulled the face plate off. Bucky looked like he was ready to keel over at any moment, but he still wore a smile. He pushed himself upright, and surged forward. Tony thought Bucky was toppling over, but as he reached out to catch him, Bucky fitted their lips together.

“You’re amazing,” Bucky breathed against his lips. “And I really want out of this thing.”

Curling his hands around the arms of the suit, Tony examined what he could see of it. He had seen the shots through the camera, and had seen the sensors light up as it was damaged, but it was a different thing to see the pale scars of the gunshots. He traced a thumb over one of the dents, feeling how deeply it had bitten into the metal.

One red gauntlet lifted to cover Tony’s hand. “Works like a dream,” he said. “Wish I’d had it before. Maybe I’d still have four limbs.”

“You do still have four limbs,” Tony pointed out.

Bucky’s laughter was interrupted by a yawn, so Tony finally got a shoulder against his chest to help him back to his feet. The platform locked around the boots, and the valet bots lowered automatically to pull at the suit. The shots had buckled several of the joinings, leaving an increasingly frustrated Bucky struggling to get out of the armor, and Tony stepping in with a wrench to help. Bucky ended up captured by his prosthetic and fighting to keep his other arm free, while the valet bots yanked at the stuck pieces of the thigh plates.

Tony knelt in front of him, braced the left leg with one knee and a shoulder, and shoved himself between Bucky’s thighs to get the wrench under one of the stuck plates.

“Tony!” Pepper called from the top of the stairs. “Have you seen the –”

Tony twisted around, and she froze in the doorway, her eyes almost comically wide as she took in the scene. “Let’s be honest here. Not the most compromising position you’ve ever found me in.”

Bucky finally got the valet bot to release his arm and whirled wildly before setting a hand on Tony’s head to steady himself. He cleared his throat. “Ma’am.”

Lips parted, Pepper stared at them for several seconds before her eyes transferred to the suit. “Are those bullet holes?”

“Just bullet scratches,” Bucky said. “None of them went through.”

Pepper’s mouth worked soundless for several seconds, and then she spun on her heel and marched back out the workshop door. The clatter of her heels on the floor echoed off the relative silence in the workshop. One enterprising valet bot finally got the last bolt out, and Bucky flailed his way out of the boots, and into Tony’s lap.

“Why do I feel like Mom just caught me making out with my boyfriend?”

“Because my blatant dismissal of disapproval hasn’t worn off on you yet?” Tony suggested, leaning forward to kiss Bucky on the corner of the lips. “I have a shower, and clean clothes, and a very big bed upstairs.”

“Hmm.” Bucky narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “How big?”

~*~

It was almost afternoon before Tony woke up. He found Bucky still in bed, or perhaps back in bed, propped up against the headboard. Bucky had a tablet in his lap, and the prosthetic propped up on his knee. He idly touched each finger to his thumb, and then spread them out as wide as they would go. Tony watched the play of the interlocking plates.

“Iron Man,” Bucky said after a moment. He looked down at Tony’s raised eyebrows, and then turned the tablet so Tony could see the dimmed display. The headline of the article read, “Who is Iron Man?”

Tony disguised the unexpected pang of hurt by reaching up to grab the tablet. He set his free hand on Bucky’s thigh and rolled the sheets between his fingers. They hadn’t managed anything more complicated than a few clumsy kisses in the shower, and then had fallen directly to sleep. Tony wasn’t sure if the attraction would survive without the adrenalin, but Bucky tipped his leg over so that Tony’s hand rested on his inner thigh, and then covered it with his own hand. He traced nonsense symbols over Tony’s fingers while Tony read.

“I know you wanted it to be you,” Bucky said softly.

Both of Tony’s hands were occupied, so he couldn’t reach up to feel for the reactor. He shrugged, and then summoned a smile. “Iron Man is better than Gold-Titanium Alloy Man, I guess.”

“People are going to connect me to you eventually.”

Tony shrugged. “We’ll tell them you’re my bodyguard.”

“Tony. I _am_ your bodyguard,” Bucky said with a touch of exasperation, reaching over to take the tablet away from him. At Tony’s noncommittal noise, Bucky rolled over so that he was straddling Tony’s lap. “Let me demonstrate exactly how good I can be with your body. Boss.”

“If you call me _boss_ in bed, I might get ideas,” Tony warned, unable to deny the shiver of pleasure that ran up his spine at the thought.

Bucky grinned. “I happen to think your ideas are pretty amazing.”

“You just want more cool tech.”

“Not that you’re wrong,” Bucky said, eyes glittering in amusement, “But at the moment, my interest is completely, 100-percent, totally unprofessional.”

Tony laughed, and Bucky leaned down to kiss the smile off his face. Maybe having a bodyguard wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I make it a point to respond to all of my comments, even if it's just to say "thank you." (Though I can't promise speed) If you don't want/need a response, feel free to include NRN (no reply needed) in your comment!


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